I for one welcome our suborbital overloads

…. and have been since 2004 when the Ansari X-Prize was won and nothing happened. 5.5 years and counting. It’d be nice if this supposed “race” would heat up a little. It really does seem that everyone assumes Virgin Galactic / Scaled Composites is so far ahead that they can never be caught.. despite all the evidence to the contrary.

Did you happen to catch the Armadillo Aerospace yearly video:



This is last year’s video:



Did you think the same thing as me: “That’s it?”

Rocket Racing League. Methane/LOX engines for NASA. Lunar Lander Challenge. So the only new thing is the low altitude hops. (Speaking of which, break the DC-X altitude record of 3.14km already!) At Space Access, after the grumblings about being trumped on the LLC, Carmack made the pledge that this year they’ll be doing something new. Here’s hoping it involves *people*.

And while I’m being critical.. which, I know, I do too much.. What’s next for Masten? More hops? Can we count on you to beat Armadillo to that DC-X altitude record?

And yes, XCOR.. smart about their “don’t talk until you have something to report” policy, but unfortunately they still don’t have anything to report. Back at the start of the year Greason suggested that there would be something to report this year.. and so we wait.

I think it is fair to say that no suborbital tourism will be flying this year, or next year. We might see some interesting test flights, but that’s about it. Maybe 2012?

My point, (sorry, did I forget I had one? /rant) is that this stuff seems to be hard.. it seems to be a long bet.. so you can’t really crystal ball it. For all we know suborbital tourism will die out, perhaps with a bang, perhaps with a whimper. But we can hope, so long as you can stand Jeff Bell’s ridicule.

Comments

  1. windows for games5:10 PM

    I wonder why it was named as Armadillo Aerospace. The video clip was very interesting. Now I know how tough it was to create a rocket.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Disabling OS-X Device Removal Warnings In Yosemite

Image
If you're anything like me you've probably seen the Disk Not Ejected Properly message so many times that you've forgotten how annoying it is.. despite the fact that you never even wrote anything to the usb drive that you're yanking out of your Mac the operating system insists that you remove it "correctly". You're supposed to click the eject button. Why? I dunno, Apple seems to think that if you can write to it then the operating system might have written to it - and being Apple, they probably have. Well ya know what? Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me. Note: this will not fix your external drive disconnecting when your Mac goes to sleep. For that problem try disabling "put hard drive to sleep when possible" in both the Battery and Power Adapter tabs of the OS energy saver settings. What appears below is a dirty hack for deliberately removing a warning that Apple insists on showing you every single time you yank out a usb stick.
Read more

Rebirth Of The Spaceship

Image
Over the last year the space advocate community has splintered into two major groups in answering the question "where should we go next?" Moon First or Mars First . This division was present in the Review of Human Spaceflight (aka Augustine) committee's final report in late 2009, with the surprising conclusion that there isn't the funds for either, suggesting a number of intermediate destinations first - including asteroids. However, as few people consider asteroids to be truly interesting destinations for the human utilization of space ( except me! ), the debate rages on. Many Moon First advocates are "Mars Next" advocates while most Mars First advocates are "Moon Again?" detractors. The former claim that Mars exploration will benefit from lunar exploration, particularly in experience and risk reduction, and perhaps the procurement of propellant. The latter claim that lunar exploration is just a distraction and want to avoid the risk of be
Read more

Mars Direct Without Super Heavy Lift

Image
For a decade or two now the proponents of Bob Zubrin's Mars Direct have been bemoaning the lack of super heavy lift (any vehicle that can lift more than 50 ton to LEO). While few advocates claim a heavy lift launch vehicle is the only component of the Mars Direct plan which is missing, most consider it a necessary prerequisite. Before I tell you why I think that's simply wrong, let's just make a quick list of all the other things we still need: decent life support, space suits for Mars, rovers that run on methane/LOX, the ISRU propellant production system, bigger entry/descent/landing systems than have ever been flown, portable field equipment for the science mission, artificial gravity generation, and the habitat itself. Oh yeah, and a space rated nuclear reactor. The beautiful innovation of the Mars Direct plan was the use of the Mars atmosphere to produce the return propellant so it doesn't need to be carried all the way from Earth. Without this simple idea t
Read more